


By My Pundying Name

by veltzeh



Category: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Genre: Gen, Humor, Humour, POV Third Person, puns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:53:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27138976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veltzeh/pseuds/veltzeh
Summary: 0.4 seconds later SecUnit4 laughed.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 48





	By My Pundying Name

Security Consultant Nalik was supposed to go and talk to the SecUnits. Ey technically did not need to and ey knew that, but ey had agreed to the contract and the principal clients said that ey would have to verbally go through the main points of the job with the SecUnits. Ey had no idea why, and ey supposed ey did not care. For once eir audience would not, and in fact could not argue with em.

Ey put in the security feed that ey was going to brief the SecUnits. The SecUnits came out of their cubicles, stopped checking over their gear and stood in a neat row in the security ready room, armoured and faceplates opaqued.

Nalik had only once directly dealt with SecUnits before and was a little nervous, but not as nervous as ey would have been with unknown humans, because ey knew the SecUnits absolutely had to obey em. Ey entered the security ready room and waved at the SecUnits.

“Okay. It’s part of my job to go through the main points with you even if we all know it’s kind of unnecessary. But first let’s do this.” Nalik took a pile of stickers out of eir bag. Ey peeled the first one off and stuck it on the chestplate of the left-most SecUnit. It was a big “1”. “You’re SecUnit1, change your feed display name to say that.” Ey stuck the next sticker, “2”, on the chestplate of the second from the left. “And you’re SecUnit2.”

After Nalik had successfully named all four SecUnits, ey looked at them again, smiled and pointed at them. “Well, now you know who you are. If I just say SecUnit, it means any one of you, preferably the closest one. And if I need all of you, I’m going to call you… SecUnity,” ey said and pressed eir hands together.

0.4 seconds later SecUnit4 laughed just barely enough to be obviously a laugh and then forcibly stifled its breathing. Its governor module noticed an anomalous activity and caused some pain that made SecUnit4 wince. The other SecUnits were silent like the grave.

Nalik immediately turned toward SecUnit4 with a grin and keen eyes, pointing intently at it. “You laughed! I heard you laugh! I knew _somebody_ would appreciate my humour! And I knew you aren’t just bots like everyone else seems to think, you _understand_ things. Not that you’d often get to stand under things.”

SecUnit4 made another noise of amusement and pain.

“Okay, I really like you. This contract is boring as heck, so I want you to come up with more puns. If somebody asks you something, spend a second or something to think of a pun you could say in your reply and then say it. Just don’t laugh, okay? I have no idea what people would think about a SecUnit that laughs. Get that under control. And if you get a pun in, put it in the feed so I can see it too. If I ask you something in the feed, you can reply with a pun, too. Well, if it’s actually a bad situation, like, somebody could get maimed or killed or expensive equipment trashed, don’t try to come up with puns. But if you do anyway, _I’ll take them_. Okay?”

“Acknowledged, Security Consultant Nalik,” replied SecUnit4.

“Yesss, I have the best job, I get to have SecUnits make puns,” muttered Nalik to emself with glee and squeezing eir hands into fists with excitement. “So, how about that job? You watch the workers, make sure they don’t hurt themselves or each other or break equipment. You keep an eye on the diagnostics of the equipment and report anomalies. Okay? You grasp that?” Ey pointed at each SecUnit in turn.

The three first SecUnits acknowledged. SecUnit4 quickly lifted its arm and very lightly grasped Nalik’s hand in its.

“Oh! Nice job, you’re good at grasping.” Nalik patted SecUnit4’s armoured hand lightly and it let go. “SecSystem will have your routes and schedules done when the bosses decide about things. Until then, have pun I guess.” Nalik exited the security ready room.

The three first SecUnits stared at SecUnit4. After six seconds, SecUnit4 turned so that it was facing away from the others. They continued staring at it for an additional 15 seconds and then resumed their previous doings.

* * *

SecUnit4 encountered an inadequately fastened computer rack and prevented it from falling over an engineer when she was loading hard drives in. She fell down on the floor in shock and one hard drive bounced away, but she seemed otherwise fine. SecUnit4 pushed the rack into place, but it was still wobbly.

The engineer stood up, still shaking a little. “Uh… Can you – – Can you hold it there for a while?”

“Yes. I’ll be supportive.”

The engineer made half of a nervous chuckle. “Ah! Um…” She turned and walked off in search of tools.

SecUnit sent its very first pun into the security feed. Security Consultant Nalik replied with “Nice.” and `item sigil 6574: support beam`.

* * *

SecUnit4 watched a human stare at it. The human had just dropped an open container of corrosive liquid on the floor.

“Don’t… don’t, don’t tell anyone about this. I can fix this. I’ll just neutralise it. The horror… Don’t tell my boss. She’d explode.”

“Your boss sounds like she’s under a lot of pressure.” The human chortled. “So it may be better if she doesn’t get involved. I’ll make a security report and Security Consultant Nalik will decide on the course of action.”

Later, SecUnit4 watched a camera feed of Nalik reading its report and giggling at it. Ey marked the issue as resolved without further involvement.

* * *

SecUnit4 watched through a camera as three engineers in their tiny mess took out a frozen fish from their food reserve.

Engineer 1: “This is really weird. I don’t believe you.”

Engineer 2: “You’ll believe me after this. I definitely heard it make a pun when it held the computer rack for me. It said it was being ‘supportive’. And yesterday Loilae told me that she’d heard it say ‘beep’ at a miner who made fun of it by making inquisitive beeping noises at it.”

Engineer 3: “And the day before that I was in the mines testing the fixed drill and I literally said ‘I feel safer with the SecUnit hanging around in here’ and when I next looked at it, it had its hand around an overhead support rack and _was hanging from it_. I howled.”

Engineer 1: “Yeah but… How can it even do all that? Shouldn’t its governor module stop that kind of thing?”

SecUnit4 wondered that, too. It was very new and was not sure where exactly the line went with its governor module. Obviously physical laughter had been too much, but the module did not notice or care about its internal amusement. It also seemed that if the humans’ words could be interpreted in a way that could have been a request or otherwise completely harmless, maybe, SecUnit4 might get away with it. Otherwise it certainly would have been severely punished for grabbing Security Consultant Nalik’s hand, however lightly.

Engineer 3: “I don’t know and I don’t care. No one’s security is compromised by puns. And that’s why we’re doing this.”

Engineer 2: “So. Let’s heat this thing. Then I’ll go over to it and complain that it… the fish smells and demand that it do something about it. It’s the perfect setup for a ‘fishy’ situation and it’s simple. It will definitely take the chance.”

Engineer 1 sighed but went along.

SecUnit4 felt conflicted. It did want to make the pun. It did want to satisfy the humans expecting its pun. However, it thought that if it did so, somebody would notice. Somebody might see the recordings. Somebody could even get suspicious over the puns it had already made. It was now sure it should not really have been making them, that much was clear from the behaviour of the other SecUnits. It would have to disappoint the humans.

After a short moment, engineer 2 walked briskly through the corridor that SecUnit4 was patrolling.

“Hey, SecUnit4! The other engineers defrosted a fish and it smells awful. Make them get rid of it or something.”

“That is not a security issue.”

“What? But… but what if it’s poisoned? It smells really bad!”

“…Acknowledged.”

SecUnit4 walked over to the engineers’ tiny mess. It looked at the fish that was just about to be divided into portions. “I received a complaint about possibly poisoned fish.”

Engineer 1 stared accusingly at engineer 3, who looked helpless.

“I don’t know what she thought but the fish is not poisoned. Fish naturally smell like this,” said engineer 1 while looking at the fish.

“Acknowledged.” SecUnit4 walked away and continued its route.

* * *

SecUnit4 managed to make a few more puns without rousing suspicion. Eventually, the contract came to an end.

Security Consultant Nalik did not have any orders to come to the security ready room, but ey did anyway. Ey raised eir hands a little and spoke.

“Okay. Nice job, SecUnity. And especially you, SecUnit4, some of those puns saved my day. I hope I’ll get you again some day.” Ey steepled eir fingers in front of eir chin. “I want to do one more thing before we leave. I want to give you a new name.” Ey pointed at SecUnit4.

SecUnit4 wanted the new name to be _Punit_.

“Your name should be Punit.”

SecUnit4/Punit felt very proud. “Thank you, Security Consultant Nalik.”


End file.
